Leahy letter may have been misdirected, possible source of State Department mail contamination

WASHINGTON -- The FBI announced Monday it believes a letter to
Sen. Patrick Leahy, belatedly found last week, was written by the
same person who sent an anthrax-laced letter to Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle last month.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that the letter
to Leahy, D-Vt., which was misdirected, could have been the source
of anthrax contamination at a State Department mail facility that
sickened one worker.

Two buildings on Capitol Hill struck by the anthrax scare
reopened, and U.S. health experts provided assistance to
authorities in Chile who found a new letter that may contain
anthrax.

Tom Skinner, spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta, said the agency was planning to test a
substance found in a letter that the Chilean government said was
tainted with anthrax. The government of Chile said the letter came
from Switzerland.

Regarding the Leahy letter, U.S. Postal inspector Dan Mihalko
said it contains a handwritten ZIP code of 20510 that also can be
read as 20520 by optical character reader machines at the postal
service.

"That's the exact change needed to forward something to the
State Department," said Mihalko.

"It raises an interesting possibility that the letter to Leahy
could have been misdirected through the State Department mail
system, which might explain how that system got contaminated," said
Mihalko.

The Leahy letter was found Friday by the FBI and hazardous
materials personnel from the Environmental Protection Agency in one
of 280 barrels of unopened mail sent to Capitol Hill and held since
discovery of the letter to Daschle.

The outside of the Leahy letter appears virtually identical to
the Daschle letter and bears the same fictitious "Greendale School"
return address, all-capital block letters and other
characteristics.

Investigators are convinced the two letters were "sent by the
same person," the FBI said. Both the Daschle and Leahy letters also
had block printing with a slight slant to the right and a postmark
from Trenton, N.J.

Two of three Senate office buildings reopened Monday after being
swept for anthrax contamination. The Hart Senate office building
remained closed.

Environmental Protection Agency officials have said it will take
three to four weeks to decontaminate the offices of 10 senators in
the Hart building in which traces of anthrax have been found, a
Senate aide speaking on condition of anonymity said. Those cleanups
have not yet started.

Two other offices where bacteria were found -- Daschle's and the
next-door suite of Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis. -- will be sealed
and cleaned with chlorine dioxide gas.

Officials originally hoped Hart, which houses half the Senate's
100 members, would be cleaned and reopened by Nov. 21. With the new
cleanup timetable, authorities have set no new target date, but
many aides believe the building may not reopen until next year.

The Dirksen and Russell Senate buildings were closed Saturday
after the letter to Leahy was discovered.

The FBI said all congressional mail set aside after discovery of
the Daschle letter has been inspected, and the Leahy letter was the
only suspicious piece.